As we honor the leaders who have made this country what it is today, we offer these presidential words of wisdom and vision.

“America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men.”-- Woodrow Wilson

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”-- Abraham Lincoln

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”-- Thomas Jefferson

“America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”-- Harry S. Truman

“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”-- Theodore Roosevelt

“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.”-- James Madison

“Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.”-- Herbert Hoover

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”-- Ronald Reagan

“I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”-- George Washington

“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.”-- John F. Kennedy